Tell Steve King and Marsha Blackburn That Killing Horses for Meat Has No Place in the U.S.

Support OneGreenPlanet

Being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high quality content. Please support us!

Processing ...

USD

Stripe Payments requires Javascript to be supported by the browser in order to operate.

Please do not refresh the page and wait while we are processing your payment.

Across centuries, horses have played one of the most important roles when it comes to the bond between humans and animals. We have made horses help us in such a profound way that it is difficult to imagine what our history would look like without these special animals. In return for traversing large distances and carrying people on their backs, horses have been provided with safety, comfort, and food – or at least that is how the fair exchange was always meant to look. Today, horses are still used for work, unfortunately sometimes in horrible conditions. Even though they have always been our companions, some industries keep failing horses by blatantly exploiting them. Sadly, not everyone seems to recognize and appreciate the value of those animals. Some people – including a couple of U.S. Representatives – do not even believe horses should be granted the right to live in safety, but instead can and should be sold and killed for their meat.

The organization Animal Wellness Action has launched a Care2 petition to draw attention to Representatives Steve King’s (R-Iowa) and Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tennessee) baffling support for the practice of slaughtering horses and enabling so-called “kill buyers” to ship horse meat abroad, for example to Europe and China. Kill buyers purchase young and healthy American horses and arrange for them to be transported to Canada or Mexico where the animals are killed in slaughterhouses. Every year, 100,000 American horses are butchered for their meat and sold to other countries.

Advertisement

Steve King and Marsha Blackburn not only support the killing of horses bred in America but even want to reverse the ban on slaughtering American horses in the U.S. The consequences of the horse meat trade being supported by lawmakers and thriving any further would be terrifying and should never become reality.

“Horses belong in the stable, not on the table,” Animal Wellness Action writes. Click here to sign the petition voicing your opposition to the betrayal of the bond between humans and horses and to the senseless slaughter of horses for meat.

The difference is this: until the fetus becomes sentient it isn\’t capable of feeling nor experiencing and isn\’t a person. All animals are sentient and are persons, whether anyone admits or not, and as persons they have rights whereas objects, such as nonsentient fetuses have no capacity for rights. Therefore, women, who are persons, have rights including the right to abortion without any interference until the fetus becomes a person, when it becomes sentient.

The fact is that about 93% of abortions are performed at or before the 13th week, well before the fetus can feel or experience anything. The others are performed on nonsentient, malformed fetuses, such as anencephalics, to save the life of the mother. Well formed babies are delivered via cesarean section.

As usual, the slaughter supporters always deflect/change the subject and their favorite is abortion. If you want to discuss abortion, why not take your drivel to an abortion article or a thread discussing abortion?

Dear Ms. Padja,You have omitted the entire crux of the matter: the "why" politicians such as King and Blackburn are being pressured into endorsing horse-slaughter legislation. In other words, you\’ve <deliberately> excluded 98% of the arguments, pro and con. You love the idea of saving horses (so do I) but you are mistaking your self-interest for "love of the horse." I read the comments below and I wonder if the tone of them would change if you told them the WHOLE story–not just the part that guarantees signatures on your petition. I\’m actually surprised that Onegreenplanet consented to print this without requesting that you include the ugly but conclusive "Why."

I think it is disgusting that horses are killed for meat – it\’s as bad, but no worse, than killing pigs, cows, sheep and dogs for meat. There seem to be a lot of hypocrites in the world, who value one sentient, intelligent, social animal more than others, just out \’tradition\’, rather than considering from the point of view of the animal.